‘Neglect or failure in duty. Oppressive conduct or harassment. Whatever sticks. There’s already more than enough.’ A pause. ‘Have you seen the news? You haven’t even seen it, have you? You don’t even know.’ Swire sighed with disbelief. ‘Do yourself a favour, Wolfe, you dumb bastard. Turn on the TV.’

She hung up.

I served up Scout’s scrambled omelette then turned on the BBC. It looked like the news looked every night. A bomb in Iraq. A riot in Athens. A meeting in Brussels. A missing child. A flatlining economy. And then came photographs of three soldiers.

‘. . . Private Himal Sameer, twenty-two, Corporal Bibek Prabin, twenty-three, and Captain Ned King, thirty-five, of the Royal Gurkha Rifles—’

‘Daddy?’

‘Wait, wait. Let me watch this, angel.’

‘. . . in Helmand when their armoured vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. All three died of their injuries in the hospital at Camp Bastion.’

The two young Gurkhas wore serious expressions in their official portraits, their features rigid with fierce pride and there was Ned King, smiling broadly for the camera, as if he held a secret the world could never share.

Chapter 32

32

PEREGRINE WAUGH WALKED down Potter’s Field High Street, his tremendous height raising that gaunt bony head above the crowds and almost brushing the bunting and Union Jacks that fluttered above the streets.

It was just three days since the smiling face of Captain Ned King had appeared on the evening news, and now every boy from the old school was there, gathered in their houses, youngest at the front, but the Head Master said not a word to any of them. He did not need to, for he could make a boy straighten his slovenly tie with just his towering presence; he could kill idle chatter with one fierce look.

Waugh paused when he reached the boy soldiers of the Combined Cadet Force, four lines of them at the end of the high street, self-consciously rigid with military discipline, and for the first time that day he smiled.

The school and the town had turned out for the homecoming of Captain Ned King.

I saw Sergeant Lane, the local copper who had been no help with my enquiry about Anya Bauer’s disappearance, taking his duties more seriously today. He patrolled down the empty street, closed to traffic for the day, and greeted the Head Master with something like a cringing bow.

I glimpsed faces I knew in the crowd. On the far side of the high street I saw Mrs Jones, the mother of Adam Jones, the second victim, her face skull-like under her headscarf, almost totally consumed by her cancer now, supported by Rosalita, the Filipina housekeeper, who had a protective arm wrapped around her employer.